Students with civic interest can minor in social justice starting next spring. Graphic by Elizabeth Wong.
The University of Rhode Island will offer a new 18-credit minor in social justice and civic responsibilities beginning this spring, featuring a curriculum that spans 68 courses, 22 departments and four different colleges.
Judy Van Wyk, associate professor of sociology and a creator of the minor, first started looking through current course offerings in March 2019 to see if a new minor in social justice would even be possible. She was surprised to find around 80 courses that would be applicable.
As a sociologist, Van Wyk has always felt that social justice was at the core of sociology, but most people don’t actually have an understanding of what social justice means. It is defined on the minor’s website as “valuing human life, equal access to social capital, personal dignity, and the implementation of human rights for all.”
Van Wyk said that in SOC 100: Introduction to the Sociological Perspective, most of the students leave the class with a sense that inequality is a major issue in our world today and something needs to be done about it. While she believes SOC 100 should be a requirement for all people she hopes that through taking courses in the minor students will be able to achieve that same feeling and more. Then, they will be equipped with tools to do something about it through the civic responsibilities aspect beyond just learning the sociology behind it.
“Inequality, and not just inequality, but inequity, is not human; people shouldn’t be treating each other like that,” Van Wyk said. “I’d like for people, no matter what their major is, to leave college knowing that. You should understand those basic tenets of human decency, and I think they’re going to get that from this minor. I can’t imagine a track through the courses where you wouldn’t come out thinking ‘This is not right. We have to do something about this.’”
Over the summer, an advisory board Van Wyk formed consisting of multiple faculty members across different disciplines and two students worked to draft a proposal for the minor. Van Wyk described the process as extensive and said there were some funding obstacles.
Van Wyk first requested funding in the summer of 2019 for the following summer. Van Wyk said she was told by the Dean of the College of Arts and Scientists, Jeannette E. Riley, that minors were not a priority of the college. Van Wyk said that this motivated her to pursue the creation of the minor even more.
The Faculty Senate approved the minor proposal on Oct. 15. Van Wyk stressed that just because the minor will begin being offered in the spring, it doesn’t mean that the credits have to be earned starting then. If students come into the minor having completed some of the curriculum previously, they can still have these credits approved for the minor and be able to graduate with it.
To make sure this was possible for students, Van Wyk added two students to her advisory board. She realized that a lot of faculty tends to forget what it was like to be a student, and one of her biggest concerns was making the minor workable.
One of the students on the advisory board is junior Katelyn Dubois. Dubois is a student in both the international studies and diplomacy and Chinese flagship programs and the president of the URI chapter of Amnesty International. She was approached by Van Wyk this past summer to be on the board and quickly agreed.
At the time, she had been working on a Black Lives Matter project with a friend and a colleague and felt that the minor would be very timely, especially because there is no major or minor that is currently being offered in the realm of social justice and civic responsibility. Dubois and Van Wyk see the minor as applicable to all students regardless of what they’re majoring in.
“The tools that you will learn in these classes are really so valuable and they are applicable to you even if on the surface level it might not appear to be so,” Dubois said. “Social injustices, human rights, these are all things that affects every single one of us so I hope that, especially with the given social and political climate right now, students will be inspired to take these courses, but not only that, but to learn what our amazing professors and faculty are URI are teaching and then take it out into the world and incite proactive, positive change in our communities.”
For more information on the minor, the interest form and the curriculum, students can visit https://sites.google.com/uri.edu/sjcr-minor/home?authuser=0.